


The Space Between

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [10]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Healthy Adult Conversations, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Kix is the only one of Command who hasn't slept with Captain Rex.
Relationships: CT-6116 | Kix & CT-7567 | Rex
Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701715
Comments: 28
Kudos: 192





	The Space Between

“I just think it’s a bad idea.”

Rex breathes something, wordless and formless. All consonants and guttural sounds pulled from his chest with little effort. Kix checks the 'fresher mirror; his eyes have slipped closed. His eyelashes are so long. Kix hadn’t ever noticed before. They fan out, the blond nearly invisible against his cheeks, defined more by shadows left than their own existence.

Beauty wasn’t likely a factor when the clones were designed. Few would argue that it wasn’t a result anyway. And few _ vode _1 are as beautiful as their Captain.

The curve of his head sits warm against the backs of Kix’s knuckles. The hair is just long enough to start curling, to catch for spare fractions of seconds in the V between Kix’s fingers. The clippers on the countertop seem like sacrilege but the Captain won’t be convinced to keep the length.

They’ve all of them tried.

Kix nudges his knuckles against the curve of Rex’s head and his chin drops obediently to his chest. His neck is long and golden and lightly corded with muscle. Kix’s fingers itch.

“It’s not that I don’t want to. Or I haven’t thought about it. I have.” Kix has thought about the Captain a lot. A perfectly unreasonable amount.

Kix should be pulling out a number 1 clipper guard next. Should be snapping it on and flipping on the clippers and shoring off six weeks of gold curling distractingly around the Captain’s ears. Curling sweetly. It softens him, they all think. It’s likely why he wants it gone.

Kix rolls his thumb gently across the very bottom of Captain Rex’s hairline. Just above the towel he’s tucked into the Captain’s collar. The curls slip softly over his thumbnail.

“I know, logically, that they don’t mean to talk like it’s a … a trophy. A rite of passage.”

But they cluster about it sometimes. Discuss. Compare. _Fantasize_. Cut to a stop when Kix passes, all sheepish winces and apologies. All we-know-you-don’t-want’s.

Except Kix does. He does want. Badly. But.

“It’s a bad idea.”

His index finger brushes under the Captain’s ear. Back behind, around, over the top of it. His thumb slips higher, lying flush against the gentle waves. Kix doesn’t know when his other hand came up, when it starts to mimic on the other side. The clipper guard tumbles to the floor. The Captain’s head bobs softly with the pulsing pressure of Kix's hands.

It’s uniquely, beautifully obscene.

“You deserve better.” Kix swallows. “Than to be objectified.”

Kix hopes he knows that. Hopes that the quiet grunt means he knows, he agrees, he’ll put a stop to the hungry eyes that follow him, maybe. That he’ll at least brush Kix’s greedy hands away, demand Kix gets on with the trim.

Captain Rex shifts, settles deeper in the makeshift barber chair, settles deeper against Kix’s ill-conceived touch. Hums, deep and vibrating against Kix’s fingers. His bowed head drags his rough stubble against his chest. The buzz of it is accusing and arousing. Kix wants desperately to bite.

“Captain _please_.”

Kix is the only one Command, staff or track, that hasn’t slept with Captain Rex. He was happier without knowing that. He was happier when his want was theoretical. When that edge of _possible_ hadn’t cut through the _forbidden_ and added damning detail to Kix’s fantasies.

“You _have to_ -”

“Don’t really see why I _have to_ do anything at all. Besides what I choose to.”

Beautiful, their Captain, but obstinate. Kix bends with a watery laugh. The beginnings of curls are soft under his forehead.

“I can’t,” he admits. The Captain’s scruff scratches sweet against the arms Kix has wrapped across his chest. He’ll remember the sensation in his dreams, he knows. “It’s a terrible idea. I can’t do this, and stay professional after.” Kix has proven it, hasn’t he? Look at Jesse.

Once, just one person in their Company has convinced Kix to give in, to indulge. And now he’d kill for Jesse. Break regs for him without hesitation. Kix doesn’t know how to maintain a balance; he knows his own weakness.

“I think you’re underestimating yourself.” Hands wrap around each of his elbows as if to hold him together. “I think you’re better than you suspect.”

‘Stronger than you feel,’ the saying goes. ‘Stronger than you feel, smarter than you think, wiser than you know.’ It’s a Vode saying, from somewhere or other. One of the Commanders, likely. Kix has never felt it less. His breath stirs little locks of hair. He doesn’t kiss them. He wants to.

“But your restraint has always been one of the things I admire most about you. Whatever you decide, I respect.” Beautiful. Obstinate. And Force-damn does he love them. Just as much as every damn one of them loves him. “What do you need?”

Just once, just a little, for just a moment, Kix allows himself a breath of temptation.

The Captain’s curls are soft and warm and sweet against Kix’s lips.

Kix allows himself a taste of what he wants. He pulls away, gives himself what he needs.

Distance.

“Nothing, Captain.” What Kix needs, he realizes, he will always need to give himself. It’s his own self-control he needs to exercise. “I have this.”

“Good man.”

Kix laughs, quiet and somehow relieved. His professionalism is as much his armor as his shell; he doesn’t know how he would operate without it.

The ends of inch-long hair catch in the very tips of his fingers, curls tug taut. “Then I suppose we should get on with this crime?”

“We should,” Kix Captain agrees. “I think I’ve suffered long enough.”

The number one guard retrieved, quickly cleaned, snapped into place for this defiling. The trimmers buzz hungrily.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you into keeping it?”

“I’ll make you a deal.”

The curve of Captain Rex’s head traps Kix hand between it and the back of the seat. He’s a medic and his fingers don’t tremble. He thinks, in this moment, they probably could. The look in his Captain’s face is a soft, distant kind of darkly amused.

“I’ll let it grow out, the day you tell me you want something to hold on to.”

If he was an ounce less himself he would choke. If the Captain was an ounce less himself, he’d miss the barest moment in which Kix froze.

They are, both of them, only wholly themselves.

The Captain smirks. Kix smacks his head forward, chin down.

“Asshole,” he declares. The Captain’s laugh rumbles in time with the buzzing of the clippers.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Brothers. Back  
> 
> 
> AKA Projie's been fantasizing over haircuts and speculatively eyeing Youtube Tutorials that claim It Isn't That Hard.


End file.
